Ophelia’s Place Design Challenge

Cast your vote!

Once again Beaudet Jewelry is proud to announce the third annual Ophelia’s Place design challenge.

We are asking you to help choose the winner of this fun competition and pick your favorite jewelry design. The winning design will be created by master jeweler Charles Beaudet and will be raffled off at the Ophelia’s place Gala

About the design challenge.

For the third year in order to raise funds for this amazing facility, Charles Beaudet has met with these amazing young girls to teach them about design and nurture creativity. The girls then draw up designs inspired by precious stones that we provide. Designs were chosen that fit the criteria of budget, materials, and complexity, and it is now up to you to decide which design will be created. The finished piece will then be Raffled off and all the proceeds will go to Ophelia’s Place to help insure they can continue to make big changes in young girls lives.

About Ophelia’s Place

Ophelia’s Place was created to provide services that intervene at an early point in a girls life, giving her an opportunity to develop supportive relationships and strengths that will lead to her long-term well-being. Early interventions can help prevent tragic and costly outcomes such as domestic violence, low educational achievement, early pregnancy, or drug and alcohol abuse.

After spending years learning the technical jargon around diamonds and jewelry The world has spun around enough that most of it has changed. Unfortunately a lot of that change is misplaced and that makes for more confusion not less. The fact that most diamond shoppers go on line to places that are selling diamonds to get their information instead of the independent laboratories, empowers sellers to twist the terms to their benefit. As an example I will use one term I was surprised that so many people came in to my store using.
Scintillation :
Originally scintillation was the flash of light coming off the polished surface of a diamond when you moved it in a strong light, like the flashes off water or the twinkle of a star. It’s even more like that spinning mirrored ball hung over dance floors. We used this to describe the look of a rose cut diamond which had a flat back. More facets and a better polish meant better scintillation.
Then as rose cuts were no longer popular we added that scintillation included the flashes off the inside surfaces as well. This seemingly logical inclusion set up the basis for confusion.
Since brilliance is measured by the amount of light that enters the crown and table of a diamond returning to the viewer through the crown and table gemologists mostly ignored the addition.
Does scintillation include brilliance or take the place of brilliance? Gemologists want to ignore scintillation as it is an effect of movement which has too many variables. Brilliance is measurable. Sales people however use the term scintillation freely while twisting and turning the diamond to prove it has the right stuff.
When I talk about a diamond’s cut I talk about the stone’s proportions, symmetry and polish. I used to say the Proportions equal the brilliance, the symmetry equals the fire and polish equals the scintillation. But now it’s generally just too long of an explanation.

Because of the light handling and durability issues involved with fancy shapes I’ve avoided talking much about them. Many people lately have seen them touted in all the bridal magazines and it’s for a good reason. They cost less. With a few exceptions for patented cuts, fancy shape diamonds run less than a Round Brilliant Cut. The reason is the quality and shape of the rough. The odder the shape the cheaper the rough material is. On top of this there is no IDEAL or prescribed perfect point for best light performance. Therefore it’s much easier to pack a bit of extra weight on without it being signaled out as such. So though the price per carat is less you may still be paying more for the diamond than you needed to.
Is there beauty in shape? Yes of course there is, though a well proportioned outline does not equate to a well proportioned diamond. Fine proportions and symmetry are more than just brilliance, durability and fire they also keep the diamond from looking gray and lifeless when they get dirty. Buying a fancy shaped diamond then takes more skill not less than buying a round.